Cinema: The Day the Bomb Fell

Fail Safe first appeared as the Domesday Book of 1962, a propagandistic
piece of fantascience in which Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler warned
the world that at any moment a SAC computer might go crazy and cause a
nuclear holocaust. Sold to a Hollywood operator for $500,000, the novel
has now been made into a sensational scareshow that for the first hour
or so will seem credible to civilians and keep their teeth chattering
like Geiger counters. But as a work of art and an effort of polemic,
Fail Safe labors under a special...